


By The Ones Who Circle Round

by Katherine



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Friendship, Gen, Hair, Helping, Rocket is female
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-25 21:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20378395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: "Come help me." Rocket's voice on the within-ship communicator was imperious. As though Gamora had never assisted before, as if the conversations in which Gamora offered to help had never taken place.





	By The Ones Who Circle Round

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Etnoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/gifts).

> For Rule 63 Exchange, for Etnoe who mentioned "I'm intrigued by however Rocket would visually express femininity, or the scientists that made her would express it on her behalf."

"Come help me." Rocket's voice on the within-ship communicator was imperious. As though Gamora had never assisted before, as if the conversations in which Gamora offered to help had never taken place.

Peter was elsewhere in the ship, theoretically taking inventory but in actual truth probably dancing to his music. But Drax would be competent enough at the helm and in any case the course needed little monitoring at this point in the route. Groot was with Drax, likely playing his freeze when looked at game.

Gamora slapped the wall-stud that would send an acknowledging tone, before she promptly made her way to Rocket's makeshift workshop. Workshop for makeshifts, maybe, but using things beyond their specifications had never yet slowed Rocket down. Her production of weapons and other devices for the crew, or for Rocket herself, was if anything somewhat disturbingly frequent.

The Guardians managed well enough in payment much of the time to have purchased more things ready made, but Rocket seemed to prefer setting herself challenges and deciding on specifications to her own rules, or lack thereof. How she spent her time implied that she specifically enjoyed the fiddly work, too, prefering to make small scale fixes rather than, say, tune a matter-hose for ship repair. Probably Rocket's way was slower, but it was undeniably more precise.

This time it does not appear that the help needed was directly to do with production of something. Rocket was on a stool in the middle of the room, no components within her reach. But there was a metal scent in the air.

The sharp scent, its admixture of metals, gave Gamora a startling, vivid memory of Nebula. Her sister under Thanos, trained as harshly and modified significantly more visibly. Treated more harshly, if Gamora were honest enough with herself; Gamora had quite often been Thanos' favourite or at worst still favoured, most ways.

From what little she let drop about her own history, Rocket had not had a sister, or indeed any sibling. At least not by the time she had been modified to intelligence of the kind that left her memories. Made in an experimental facility. Rocket had not been left even the parody of family that Thanos had provided to Gamora and Nebula.

Despite the distraction of memory, Gamora had almost traced the scent in the moment before Rocket waved her hand at her own shoulder.

"Solder in my hair," Rocket grumbled, as she touched with her long nails at the spots of it. The gleam of drying solder was difficult to pick out against the silvery-white of Rocket's long hair, but Gamora had passed more difficult tests of observation in her time.

It was not something which Rocket spoke of in public, even when deep in her cups. But safe and private on the ship with a supply of drink laid in, she had mentioned once to Gamora, "Could cut this all off." Her delicate hands were at her hair, twisting and twirling it. "They grew it long—they—"

Deciding not to draw a parallel directly, Gamora said only, "There are implants and abilities I could mask over or keep hidden. I do not." They were her own, for all that Thanos had set them within her, at times with his own rough hands.

"Besides," Rocket said on another occasion, as if already in the middle of an argument, the kind that led to mathematical proofs not to fisticuffs. "Animals don't have hair."

Gamora had in her travels seen long-wooled cattle on farmed moons, and the luxuriantly maned lion-beasts of Char. But she respected the point which Rocket made. Animals did not wear clothing, either, nor carry tiny hair clips in the pockets of same.

There were particularly easy days between Gamora and Rocket. Ones when they were "in a groove" as Peter Quill would say from some metaphor in his music. Once, Gamora helped Rocket fashion a twinkling hair clip that doubled as a tiny bomb, able to be set with complex twists of a jeweled piece. Gamora had politely turned down the offer of one for herself.

"Maybe a different thing," Rocket said, her hands busy searching through the drift of jewels and coiled wire.

"Certainly, if you wish to take the time," Gamora answered. The personal generosity from Rocket had, then, been rather a surprise to her. Up until that point, Rocket made things to suit herself. She had made small toys for Groot, slowly regrowing, who had been her partner in literal crime. Also for the other Guardians of the Galaxy, or at least to be used in their missions and ship, as a whole. Not, so far as Gamora had observed, for any other individual.

It was in that exchange that Gamora recognised the connection between them, of two who shared a place in the ship and a role with the Guardians, was gradually becoming a friendship.

Rocket hadn't made any kind of a ceremony out of presenting the gift to her. Only dropped it into Gamora's hand, Rocket's long-nailed fingers just brushing hers. Rocket told Gamora the cryptic clues to the hair clip's hidden features almost offhandedly, turning away before reaching to the end of her statement. (Later, as she cautiously located the tiny, hidden catches, Gamora had wondered the source of that attitude, the determination to not show too much interest in anything. A way of hiding oneself, hiding what mattered, as Gamora knew.)

Now, Gamora eased Rocket's gift from her own hair. It was a simple hair clip so far as its outer appearance went, but held two tiny blades, very cleverly disguised. It held, too, a tool far more practical in the current circumstance. Gamora had picked the solder out cleanly, leaving no need to try to convince Rocket to cut her hair shorter than the damage.

She flicked the small, sturdy comb out from its hidden recess in the hair clip, and begun to comb Rocket's hair smooth. Rocket's usual hair clip, the one with the inset bomb, was peeking out of a top pocket. Some combing, and that could be back in place without snagging on tangles, and Gamora would fold her own clip back behind her ear. They could mark themselves, she and Rocket both, with what Rocket had made and how they decorated themselves.


End file.
